Nielson Study Reveals Rock Prevails As Most Popular Genre In The US
According to a study released by Nielson Music, rock music was twice as popular in 2014 as pop music, accounting for 29% of the industry's music consumption across album, track purchases, and music streaming. Rock music dominated album sales claiming 33% of sales the the next closest genre, R&B, totaling 14% suggesting album sales, to the rock music consumer, is still preferable. Rock held its own, but fell short to R&B 25% to 29% respectively in total streams by genre.
Pop claimed a surprisingly low amount of the industry's consumption, totaling 15% for 2014. R&B/hip-hop claimed 17%, country music represented 10%, and EDM accounted for 3%. 24% of the industry's consumption was attributed to a combination of other genres.
The breakdown of top musical genres is as follows:
- Rock – 29%
- R&B/ Hip Hop – 17.2%
- Pop – 14.9%
- Country – 11.2%
- Dance/EDM – 3.4%
- Christian/Gospel – 3.1%
- Holiday/Seasonal – 2.6%
- Latin – 2.6%
- Jazz – 1.4%
- Classical – 1.4%
- Children – 1%
Music Business Worldwide reports, "These percentages were calculated by dividing total track downloads into TEA (track equivalent albums) and total streams into SEA (streaming equivalent albums)* and then adding the results to the album sales tally.Using this formula, overall annual music consumption was down year-on-year in the US by 2% to 476.5m ‘albums’ in 2014, according to Nielsen."
LONG LIVE ROCK!
dont believe this crap. YOU REALLY think country is that far behind everyone? most the usa radio wave areas have country formats. But ROCK? how many areas have new rock music stations? Where do YOU live? how many country stations and r&b stations are there? how about spanish? how many NEW music rock channels are there? How many songs did YOU PERSONALLY buy over the last 2 years? can you count them on one hand? Go on soundcloud, or youtube. How many NEW, unsigned rock bands are there?
this is obviously an attempt at making a huge online stats presence for some upcoming industry backed effort.
I totally understand this. Just because there are MORE country stations doesn’t mean MORE people listen to them.